Search engine optimisation (SEO) is getting trickier each year because the competition is fierce, rules are getting stricter, and it’s still time-consuming to keep up with everything. Here are some of my insights on SEO for blog posts for 2020:
#1 It All starts with Snippets
Your blog homepage should never feature full-length pieces. These layouts are inherently bad for the user experience (UX), and many visitors will leave your blog because, well, their attention spans are short trying to sift through everything.
Snippets show only the first few paragraphs and then follow up with a CTA to “Click to Continue,” “Continue reading,” or whichever phrase you prefer the most.
Why is this important? Aside from the already mentioned attention span issue, having full posts on your homepage counts towards duplicate content, and Google doesn’t like that when indexing.
#2 Longer Content Is Better, but You Need to Go Deeper
Gone are the days when a 500-word blog post was enough to keep Google and your readers happy. The year 2020 is all about in-depth, well-researched, and long-form content.
You should aim for producing certain posts that are close to the 2,000-word mark once per month in addition to your other shorter content. According to Backlinko and their 1-million page analysis, the average word count of highest-ranking websites and blogs was 1,890 words.
#3 Avoid Generic Pieces of Content
The topics should, of course, be relevant to your audience, and this is old news. So is there anything new on how to actually write a decent piece? Yes!
To improve your SEO for blog posts, look for those topics that can be explored from many angles to produce a unique piece.
Nobody wants to read yet another generic take on improving your marketing efforts. Instead, why not produce a piece on your very own marketing insights, or how a popular marketing strategy just didn’t work for you, along with data and insights on why it’s not the right fit? Or take a new perspective like ‘improving marketing as a home-based business’ something that is specific and speaks to your target audience.
#4 Include LSI Keywords
LSI keywords are words and phrases that have a high degree of correlation to your targeted topics. If you have written a blog post on the latest marketing trends, some LSI keywords that you would use would be:
- Marketing strategy
- Social media
- Affiliate
- Content
- Blogging
When search engines crawl your new blog post and detect these words and phrases, they will know that you have covered the topic well.
#5 Boost Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness
In 2018 Google released a major update to their search algorithm, and with it, new guidelines on content quality. In these guidelines, the biggest change was the emphasis on Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) section.
What this change means is that you now need to demonstrate expertise in the SEO for blog posts field. High EAT can be found anywhere – even forums, celebrity websites, and Q&A pages, if there are experts who provide exclusive information there.
How can you get it on your page? By showing expertise or hiring knowledgable experts to write on your behalf.
#6 Conduct Original Research
In-depth content is all about the right research. Google is a great starting point, but to produce a truly high-quality piece, you should aim for Google Scholar and look for the newest studies and data to draw from when producing your post.
Fresh statistics, studies, and data are not there just to back up your claims, they also attract other websites to link to your published piece and improve your website traffic and shares because you offer up-to-date information.
#7 Follow Linking Best Practices
Links are extremely important for blog post SEO. A healthy mix of internal and external links will help you improve your post quality. For external links, link to the above-mentioned studies, statistics, and newest data.
For internal linking, you can link to other blog posts you have published; just make sure these are relevant to your current post and don’t overdo it.
#8 Be Consistent with Posting
Consistency is about more than just producing a piece every week or few days. While important, the type of content, its relevance, and accurate timing are just as important for SEO for blog posts.
When posting, stick to your niche and subcategories, produce content for each category regularly, and schedule your posts to go live during peak hours.
#9 Use SEO Plugins
SEO for blog posts can’t be ignored in 2020, but you can make it easier with the right set of tools.
Plugins will help you optimise your posts and drive organic traffic to your blog. Yoast SEO is by far the most popular plugin for WordPress sites.
It can automatically create and manage XML sitemaps, identify duplicate content, helps you create SEO-optimised titles and meta descriptions, doing much of the heavy lifting for you.
Now you know which SEO for blog posts practices are important in 2020. If you don’t have the time to create, research, and optimise your content, hire our content writing services to take care of all your content needs for you.